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 garden together—"Nicky, it really does look as if we're to be settled for life this time," and indeed I could not help but think we were to pull it off, the way things were going at the White House. So far as I knew, there was not a creature in the county who could say any thing about us. Mr. Oakley himself would listen to no gossip. He liked my master's boyish frankness and big-hearted ways. And if ever Sir Nicolas Steele was hard hit by a girl, it was by Janet Oakley.

Unbelieving as I was, all these things had half persuaded me that my master was right and I was wrong, for all went smooth and the day was fixed, and what was to be put in the papers was given to me, who lit my pipe with it. From the first we had stipulated for a quiet marriage, for my master pretended that he had just lost his only brother, who died at Castle Rath, County Kerry,—he really died three years ago, but our grief was still young,—and being in mourning, he asked for a plain wedding, with a few county folk to see him off, and neither ball nor party to make a splash. Mr. Oakley didn't much like this, for it was a boast of his that he would fill all Derbyshire with "sixty-three" port when his daughter married; but he gave way to Sir Nicolas, and the affair was kept as quiet as possible. This was lucky, since there were plenty who would have come all the way from London to make things pleasant; and for the matter of that, we'd have been hard pressed to fake up presents enough for a show.